Green Room

Resolving the Global Warming Fraud

Students at Penn State are rallying today, to demand an independent investigation into Michael Mann, one of the primary architects of the global-warming swindle. As the organizers of the Rally for Academic Integrity point out, the university’s internal review “consisted of three Penn State employees who have strong incentives to protect the school’s reputation, and the millions of dollars it receives from global warming research grants. There was no external oversight.”

The university’s internal review was laughably superficial, relying largely on Mann’s own claims of innocence to prove his innocence. Normally, the “peer review” con jobs that kept the global-warming racket afloat involved politicized scientists vouching for each other’s work, and using strong-arm tactics to keep dissenting scientists from getting published at all. Penn State seems to have designed a far more efficient version of this process, in which Mann peer-reviewed himself.

Michael Mann produced the fraudulent “hockey stick” graph, which used carefully manipulated data to make it look like human industry had produced a massive surge in global temperatures. The business end of this hockey stick was used to beat huge amounts of cash out of businesses and taxpayers around the world. There are people who still take it seriously, since the media has not exactly been eager to spread the word that it’s a lie.

The Rally for Academic Integrity has the right idea. The global-warming scam is the crime of the century, and it will not be completely resolved until the perps have been brought to justice. These people should be prosecuted. Vigorously.

One of the major goals of law enforcement is deterrence. As things stand right now, the global-warming fraud was a very low-risk, high-reward operation. Only a few of the worst offenders have lost their jobs. Meanwhile, they raked in millions in funding, and opportunistic politicians used their phony research to seize billions of dollars, and assume vast new powers for themselves. “Climate change” has become the most widely-abused excuse for totalitarian power since the heyday of militaristic fascism in the 1930s. Criminals tend to be rational actors, especially when they’re highly educated and self-righteous. The only way to scare the next gang of con artists out of launching the next big eco-fraud is to start putting the global-warming crew in the dock.

High-profile trials would also force the media to begin covering a story they’ve been working very hard to downplay, or ignore completely. Like most other stories inconvenient to the Left, these trials would come as a mind-blowing shock to anyone who relies on the New York Times for their news. They would also go a long way toward breaking the wall of propaganda built around school children. I doubt any kid stuck in a public school has been told about the East Anglia emails, unless they’re lucky enough to have parents who can bring them up to speed. Civics classes during the first weeks of the global warming trials would be fascinating.

Putting the global warming scam artists on trial would also help to knock some sense into the dim-bulb celebrities who still believe in it. They still have some influence over people who don’t follow science and the news carefully. Someone who seriously thinks global warming causes earthquakes is not going to respond to reasoned argument, but they might settle down if they’re shamed into it. At a minimum, we can cleanse the airwaves of fanatics who think questioning their pseudo-religion is equivalent to treason.

It’s high time we forced junk scientists to face the same legal standards we apply to medical malpractice. Western nations handed over a stunning amount of economic influence to the global-warming charlatans. Anyone who asserts influence over billions of dollars should face at least the same level of legal scrutiny as the doctors targeted by oily John Edwards types. Environmental radicalism has killed far more people than medical malpractice.

Of course, many of the high priests of global warming live outside of American jurisprudence. The United Nations, and international courts, should step in to pick up the slack. We could make U.N. funding and foreign aid conditional on their doing so. The purpose of international courts is to prosecute crimes against humanity. The climate-change scam was a textbook example of one. It has already done tremendous damage to standards of living around the world, and if the East Anglia emails hadn’t come to light, it was about to get much worse.

Legal sanctions are a definitive way for society to strip away the veneer of trust that allows dishonest operators to defraud innocent people. In a world full of disinformation, mis-education, and media activism, a lot of people put their faith in official credentials. Nothing will strip those credentials away faster than prison time for those who manufactured this elegantly peer-reviewed lie, and deep shame for those who accepted their fantasies without question. No one will ever take investment advice from Bernie Madoff again… just as no one should ever mistake Rajenda Pachauri for a climate scientist.

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Comments

It’s high time we forced junk scientists to face the same legal standards we apply to medical malpractice. Western nations handed over a stunning amount of economic influence to the global-warming charlatans. Anyone who asserts influence over billions of dollars should face at least the same level of legal scrutiny as the doctors targeted by oily John Edwards types. Environmental radicalism has killed far more people than medical malpractice.

The problem is that scientific misconduct is not generally criminal. Michael Mann, for example, is morally guilty of fraud but I doubt that there is a case to be made against him for legal prosecution. I believe he should lose his job but not go to prison. The reality, unfortunately, is that he will get a wrist slap at worst, and probably not even that.

I dunno. If he’s getting something of value (research grant money from the federal government) based upon earlier reports where he intentionally manipulated data, then there could be grounds for a criminal fraud prosecution.

As usual, a great article. But after I read it, I came away with the feeling that all the steps being put forth here are pure fantasy, albeit a good one.

None of this will EVER happen. Not even close. Not one of these suggestions will materialize because the folks in charge are way, way, too invested in it and the depth and scope of the guilty extend from low branches all the way up to the highest chambers of power and they will all have to admit the wrongdoing. I do not even think a scapegoat will be offered up to be sacrificed or thrown under the bus.

Only one thing will nail the coffin shut. Ten more years or cooling. Sunspot activity trends just might produce this and when the overall global temperatures over a decade DROP, there will be nowhere to hide for these masters of fraud.

The IPCC has withdrawn an earlier statement that penguins face extinction over the next 20 years due to man-made global warming. The IPCC’s statement was based on a report that Belinda Matthews, age 10, did her 3rd grade science project. Under questioning from her parents, Belinda admitted that she did no research for her project and only got her idea from “some cartoon with dancing penguins or something.”

The IPCC defended their earlier decision to publish the report claiming that it fulfilled the requirement to be peer-reviewed since all of Belinda’s friends thought she did an “awesome job”.

Wouldn’t it be a 38pt headline:”KSM & AlGore to Face Trial in Guantanamo”. Certainly the argument could be made that AlGore wanted to combat global warming, making him an enemy combatant of those of us locked in the grip of massive snowfalls for days and desiring a little warm up.

Otherwise, we’ve assigned a name, Ponzi (the first recognized publicly), to describe the criminal racket we’ve lately come to associate with Madoff. Are we ready to assign “Goring” to the wickedness that Al, the CRU and IPCC have perpetrated?

Sentence them all to Siberia or the Yukon for life. If they’re right, they’ll be in a lush, comfortably warm paradise; if they’re the lying charlatans I believe them to be, they’ll freeze their butts off. Either way, justice is done!

The global-warming scam is the crime of the century, and it will not be completely resolved until the perps have been brought to justice. These people should be prosecuted. Vigorously.

As you say, litigation is essential 1) to force MSM to report on the hoax so that the public has broad access to the facts, and 2) to deter others in the climate change business from repeating the fraud.

As a follow-on to this article, might you consider compiling a shopping list of legal initiatives for the anti-AGW activist, outlining opportune strategies and grounds for originating anti-AGW litigation? The litigation would be designed not so much for winning a verdict as for exposing the ‘science’ of AGW. It might be a step toward a coordinated multi-front attack via the courts on AGW, which hopefully will develop.

Most on our side say “sue”, but few have a practical notion of the options or where to start.

For example, a few approaches already in play for using litigation to put sunshine on the scam…
Coleman suggests suing the sellers of carbon credits on the grounds of fraud:

Coleman said. “If the lawyers will take the case – sue the people who sell carbon credits. That includes Al Gore. That lawsuit would get so much publicity, so much media attention. And as the experts went to the media stand to testify, I feel like that could become the vehicle to finally put some light on the fraud of global warming.”

This is an action that seems well worth funding for its public education value, even if the verdict in the end is lost. It would put the validity of global warming ‘science’ on public trial. It could be financed by a consortium of conservative foundations.

Freedom of Information suits are another approach. CEI leads the way with its FOI suit against NASA and GISS.

In November, CEI filed three Notices of Intent to File Suit against NASA and its Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS), for refusing to provide documents requested under the Freedom of Information Act. According to the CEI notices, “The information sought is directly relevant to the exploding ‘Climategate’ scandal revealing document destruction, coordinated efforts in the U.S. and UK to avoid complying with both countries’ freedom of information laws, and apparent and widespread intent to defraud at the highest levels of international climate science bodies.”

Also, a little Alinsky against the Alinsky-ites is usually a good idea. Instead of resisting the global warming suits against ‘polluters’, we should turn them to our favor by highlighting the issue of causation, subjecting to public scrutiny the science of AGW.

For years, leading plaintiffs’ lawyers have promised a legal assault on industrial America for contributing to global warming.

So far, the trial bar has had limited success. The hurdles to such suits are pretty obvious: How do you apportion fault and link particular plaintiffs’ injuries to the pollution emitted by a particular group of defendants?
…
The suit was brought by landowners in Mississippi, who claim that oil and coal companies emitted greenhouse gasses that contributed to global warming that, in turn, caused a rise in sea levels, adding to Hurricane Katrina’s ferocity.

…

While the court weighed in on the sufficiency of proximate cause for purposes of standing, the more difficult issue of causation remains: Does man cause global warming?

As you say, “Like most other stories inconvenient to the Left, these trials would come as a mind-blowing shock to anyone who relies on the New York Times for their news.” Yes, AGW is, hands down, the crime of the century, and thanks for helping light the fuse on this bomb.